International employment
Our international employment team advises on both individual international assignments and projects involving larger numbers of employees including multinational restructuring projects.
Our services include preparation of the employment and commercial documents needed for international expatriate assignments including:
- Assignment letters
- Employment contracts
- ‘Residual’ agreements with a former home country employer
- Agreements between home and host companies, eg, dealing with allocation of costs or intellectual property
- International consultancy arrangements
- Assignment policy documents
- Post termination restrictions and confidentiality agreements
- Applications for immigration permission
- International data transfer arrangements.
We advise on the day-to-day management of overseas employees eg on maternity or sickness absence and disciplinary issues. We also provide guidance on the practical steps to dismiss employees working abroad, as well as on negotiation and documentation of severance terms (acting for both employers and senior employees).
The team plays a leading role in developing best practice in the area of expatriate management and international HR. For example, Juliet Carp is author of the leading textbook for lawyers and assignment managers on drafting expatriate employment documents. She is also a member of Faculty for the first University-led course designed especially for international HR managers. For further details about these, please click on the adjacent links.
We work closely with other professionals such as tax advisers and lawyers from other jurisdictions, and project manage on behalf of our clients if asked to do so, providing practical recommendations on risk management, efficiency and cost savings where possible.
Our employment law specialists work closely with colleagues providing related services including immigration, pensions, data protection, whistleblowing, share plans, private client (eg in relation to international divorce, wills and wealth planning), intellectual property and outsourcing.
Experience
Expatriate employment advice for major multinationals
We advise multinational organisations who send employees into or out of the UK or move them between other countries including preparation of framework documents, adapting those documents for individuals, management of the practical issues raised by absence, role change and ‘localisation’ of long-term expatriates.
Negotiating expatriate severance terms
The team frequently advise multinationals and senior individuals on termination of employment where more than one jurisdiction is involved. For example, dismissal of US nationals working in the City or managers of overseas subsidiaries of UK parent companies.
Large scale multinational restructuring
We have considerable experience of managing people issues related to large scale redundancy, outsourcing and business transfers, including acting for large multi-nationals on implementation redundancies in a number of countries within Europe and worldwide.